The main purpose of this thesis is to examine how the world is represented through language in white papers on educational policy, with an emphasis on the meaning of knowledge'. This is combined with a focus on how the author and the text as a way of acting socially, affect the power these types of documents have on the educational discourse. The analytical framework is based on Norman Fairclough's approach to critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1992, 2001 and 2003). The systemic-functional linguistics developed by Michael Halliday is also an important theoretical base. The texts analyzed are excerpts from white papers from 2003-2004 and 2007-2008, from two governments with different political stances, the first oriented to the right in Norwegian politics and the second one to the left. One thesis is that there is a change in discourse when the new government takes over, but the analysis shows that this does not seem to be the case. The texts examined follow an international trend of commodification in educational discourse, dominated by a vocabulary of skills. This includes related words like competence' and a whole wording of the learning domain that focuses upon measurable goals and skill training. The analysis of presuppositions is important to show how the text from 2007-2008 continues the discursive development in an implicit way, while the text from 2003-2004 is more explicit expressing an intention of a system change in this direction. The implicit continuation of discourse can be seen as a sign of discourse conventions being reproduced and naturalized. The analysis of modality shows an author with the power to impose action and who commits strongly to claims about the future. The texts are put roughly into the genre scheme for argumentation, and are characterized by the communicative goal to convince about the representation of the world to legitimize political measures.